First, McDonald’s is an example of a low-wage employer — the folks who have profited mightily while their employees have not. In fact, the McDonald’s/VISA plan expects the worker to have two jobs, to make ends meet on an unrealistically low budget and have money left over — “spending money,” the plan happily calls it. That “spending money” would have to cover all food, among other things.

As Iowa Policy Project research has shown, the cost-of-living assumptions by McDonald’s are too low. A bare-bones budget for a single person in Iowa with no kids is just over $20,100 (2011 figures), requiring a job that pays about $24,000 before taxes. It assumes absolutely nothing for eating out (even at McDonald’s), let alone saving for school or retirement.

Second, McDonald’s/VISA doesn’t assume any cost of consumer credit for debt incurred, other than a car payment. VISA depends upon low- and middle-income folks taking on debt and seeing it pile up. Sometimes it’s consumer debt, but debt also can come from health-care out-of-pocket costs when your budget is on the edge. This is a very real cost for low- and middle-income families, and it can be made even worse with predatory lending practices that are dealt with feebly by state and federal lawmakers.

McDonald’s/VISA’s tortured compilation of expenses, it should be noted, comes fairly close to the one-person, total basic-needs budget we computed for 2011 — but a single person without kids would not come close to making that total budget by following the McDonald’s/VISA plan. Add child-related expenses, and — whoa! — there’s a fire in the kitchen!

McDonald’s and VISA also include some handy money-saving tips in their brochure to help low-wage workers get by, like riding your bike to work. How about these tips for saving money: Don’t eat out, and tear up your VISA card.

Click here to see how our researchers — Peter Fisher, Lily French and Noga O’Connor — came up with our numbers. Setting money aside for savings? Not possible. Health insurance at $20 a month? Actual insurance and out-of-pocket costs are far greater. The idea of having “spending money” left over? Laughable at best.

From “The Cost of Living in Iowa,” on IPP website

But none of this is funny. It illustrates that in the real world, choices for working people in Iowa are often about how to make ends meet when income falls short. And that is the situation for about three-fourths of single-parent families and about 23 percent of all families in our state.

Instead of assuring better ways to boost income, including a higher minimum wage, much of the public policy discussion is focused on cutting back supports such as food and energy assistance, not to mention Social Security, and holding down child-care assistance. We don’t seem to recognize the need for a living wage, however that may be computed. In the end, are we even willing to support a low-wage economy?

One Comment on “We promise: We won’t cook burgers”

[…] of the Iowa Policy Project, I also suggest readers check out his latest blog post titled, “We promise: We won’t cook burgers.” It is about the spurious advice of Visa® and McDonald’s®, that their lowly paid […]